Friday, June 23, 2017

Let's Talk About the Death/Displacement Toll on the Civilians of Raqqa, Syria

Since I'm in a fightin' mood- Here's another aspect of the Syrian situation that seems to be mostly ignored by the 5 eyes main stream and so called alt media. I've mentioned the de facto no fly zone. Twice this week.

“The U.S. and U.S.-backed forces are using tactics that are virtually
guaranteed to raise enormous levels of casualties,” in the war in Syria,
IPS Middle East expert Phyllis Bennis told The Real News Network.

In
an effort to drive out ISIS from the heavily-populated—somewhere up to
200,000 civilians—city of Raqqa, the U.S. is resorting to tactics that
will make what the UN already called a “staggering loss of life”
worse"

Especially adding to the toll is the use of white phosphorus within the area

White phosphorus use, mentioned in previous post

"There has been a lack of press coverage dedicated to U.S. use of
chemical weapons, including white phosphorous—especially serious when
considering the international outcry months ago when Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad was accused of using chemical weapons in Aleppo."

There is also a lack of press focus on the escalating civilian casualties caused by U.S. airstrikes in and around Raqqa."

“This is one of those classic examples that the deaths of innocents are
far more important to cover in the mainstream U.S. press when those
responsible for the deaths of innocents are our so-called enemies,
rather than ourselves or our so-called friends,” Bennis said.

I got to admit the lack of alleged authority challenging alt media coverage has me flummoxed!The Telegraph : US-led coalition kills nearly 500 civilians in one month in Syria in record high

500 civilians is being admitted to. You all know it's higher.

Syrian residents of
the rebel-held town of Douma, on the outskirts of the capital Damascus,
break their fast with the "iftar" meal on a heavily damaged street on
June 18, 2017,Credit:
AFP

Amazing these people! Trying to have some semblence of normality in all this mayhem- Surely a necessity for their souls. For their mental health. My goodness...

Some 470 civilians, including 137 children, died in air strikes on the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil)-held cities of Raqqa and
Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria between May 23 and June 23.

The US, UK and other coalition members have provided air support for allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the ground.

The
coalition insists it takes every measure to avoid hitting civilians, but
residents say they are increasingly becoming collateral damage.

The coalition of the killing always denies their killing ways...

“We note in particular that the intensification of airstrikes, which
have paved the ground for an SDF advance in Raqqa, has resulted not only
in staggering loss of civilian life, but has also led to 160,000
civilians fleeing their homes and becoming internally displaced,” Paulo
Sérgio Pinheiro, chairman of the UN Independent International Commission
of Inquiry on Syria, said earlier this month.

In March, more than 200 mostly women and children were reported to
have been killed while they seeking refuge in a school building in the
village of Mansoura.
Alarmingly high civilian tolls are also being reported in the Iraqi
city of Mosul, where the battle to dislodge the jihadists is in the
final throes.

In one, now
notorious incident, more than 150 civilians were killed on Match 17 when
a 500lb bomb was dropped on a house to kill two Isil snipers on its
roof.

I excluded the bullshit blaming Trump, because that spin was addressed here some time ago.

Not that the US was ever very careful when it came to civilians deaths however they at least talked as if they cared. Even that pretense will not apply for Syria and Iraq

The White House has acknowledged for the first time that
strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian
deaths from U.S. drone strikes (not just drones) will not apply to U.S. military
operations in Syria and Iraq.

A
White House statement to Yahoo News confirming the looser policy came
in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen
civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a
Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria's Idlib
province on the morning of Sept. 23.

The US/Coalition Policy is the same under Trump as under Obama- Kill and displace as many civilians as possible- That's how you remake a region. And weaponize refugee flows.

3 comments:

Hi Penny:I agree it is frustrating the lack of empathy for the human victims of USrael's wars of convenience/greed/malevolence/tyranny. The way I deal with it...other than mentioning it (not nearly enough) on mu blog...is to avoid travelling to the US. It makes me physically ill to see the high standard of living and know the blood of children is the price being paid in far off lands. I haven't been to the States in a couple of years. I will be in Florida in a few months because that's where the cruise ship picks us up. But the idea of being there is already causing me nightmares. Even flying over the airspace.

us cut and run from saudi last august [wp allegations and un report uk blocked]http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/08/21/21-aug-16-world-view-us-cuts-military-advisers-saudis-yemen-peace-talks-collapse/

I am a US citizen who grew up during the Anti-Vietnam War era, and who has watched US foreign policy degenerate for the past thirty years into its current state of ceaseless warfare and callous slaughter. And I don't think what we're seeing is simply a dearth of sympathy for Syrian and Iraqi (Afghani, Libyan etc.) casualties. I think we have witnessed a more-or-less systematic attempt, put in place after the end of the Cold War, to persuade (brainwash?) the American People that war is necessary and good, that civilian casualties are also necessary and good, and that anybody who 'hates America' or 'envies our freedoms' etc. can and should be killed as 'terrorists' without regard for their guilt or innocence of wrongdoing. I think there has also been a more-or-less systematic attempt to stereotype Muslims as the great enemy of the US, to suggest that all Muslims are more-or-less terrorists, and to claim that destroying Muslim nations and killing Muslim civilians is all part of the great cause set in motion after Sept. 11th after the Post-Vietnam antiwar generation (and not just by Trump): to 'Make America Great Again.' I think Christian Zionists and the AIPAC lobby are part of this campaign to stereotype Muslims as the great enemy, under some delusional Armageddonite/Rapture etc. mentality, but Republican neocons (the Bush/Cheney Gang) and even Clinton democrats (Hillary) and Obama are equally guilty (they created the Syrian situation, after all), because they have given the White House the Pentagon and the CIA carte blanche to wage counter-terrorist/terrorist warfare without the slightest regard for war crimes and atrocities anywhere in the Muslim world. But what's worse, I'm afraid that the repercussions of hatred between the West/America and the Muslim world created by the White House war on terror will now go on basically forever, resulting in whole generations of Muslim youths so driven by hatred and violence they will commit suicide just to attack the West/America, thereby giving the West/US another excuse to attack the Muslim nations. The Islamic State is a creation of twenty-five years of the US Iraq War, and will not be destroyed by more counter-terrorist/terrorist bombings of civilians (Mosul, Raqqa, Aleppo), but will continue to feed upon the hatred and violence directed against them, thereby fueling the self-perpetuating cycle of violence, which, at this point, appears endless. The only way to stop the war on terror is to accept that Islamist terrorists, however depraved and dehumanized by violence they may be, are still human beings, and must be negotiated with to stop the ceaseless slaughter. Only when the Islamist terrorists (like the Vietcong after Tet, like the El Salvadorean death squads and the FMLN, like the Sandinistas, etc.) are convinced to negotiate a cease-fire and brought into the political process will Islamist terrorism and the West/US war on terror cease. That's the lesson we should have learned from Vietnam, but which nobody on either side of the war on/of terror is willing to listen to. Not even Senator John ('Vietnam Vets Against the War') Kerry. Let alone the Great Satan and Antichrist, Putinesque US President Donald J. Trump, who is simply incapable of running an ethical real estate scam, let alone the war on terror. But I still hope that at some point the US Supreme Court, the US Congress, and the American We the People, will finally get tired of the constant false state of emergency and the ceaseless slaughter, and decide to stop the war, simply by refusing to support (or fund) it anymore, refusing to believe the propaganda and lies, and simply saying: no more...

Think about this?

War is .....

...THE CONTINUATION OF STATE POLICY, BY OTHER MEANS

.......A POLITICAL ACTIVITY IN WHICH VIOLENCE IS USED TO BEND THE WILL OF YOUR ENEMY TO THAT OF YOUR OWN

Stop being Manipulated by the Elites

For if you [the rulers] suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves [outlaws] and then punish them.´ - Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)

Resource: Ukraine Military Marker

How your brain works

“‘Each thought and behavior is embedded within the circuitry of the neurons, and…neuronal activity accompanying or initiating an experience persists in the form of reverberating neuronal circuits, which become more strongly defined with repetition”

Richard Restak

Unshackle YOUR mind

'The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed'- Steve Biko

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Edward Bernays: Perception Management it is a Reality

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society,"

"Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. . . . In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons . . . who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."

About Me

This blog is a place to not only post information that will never see the light of day on the mainstream media, but, also to present alternative perspectives to main stream media information, that most often presents no background, no context, and never questions the information presented.
The name I chose, Penny for your thoughts, is an invitation to readers to share their relevant thoughts on the varying information.